Another Kiwi icon is falling into Australian hands

By Colin Kruger

March 5, 2018 — 5.03pm

The headline from the Manawatu Standard said it all: Rod Drury stands down as CEO of Xero, replaced by Aussie.Barely a month has passed since Drury abandoned its Kiwi stock market listing, crossed the ditch and listed on the ASX - and the company has already announced plans to replace its local founder/CEO with an Aussie on April Fool’s Day.

He is stepping aside to make way for former Microsoft boss Steve Vamos, who apparently will be a more capable CEO.

Former Microsoft boss Steve Vamos.Credit:Rob Homer

"While working with Steve that became apparent and I started realising all the things I didn't know. I had to make sure we were making the big decisions now to create long-term shareholder value, while I get to do the bits I love," Drury told The Australian Financial Review. That must be particularly galling for Kiwi investors. Vamos is not unknown across the ditch.

He is part of the Fletcher Building board which has proven itself unable to profitably assemble anything bigger than a tin shed amid the biggest building boom in the country’s history.

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But he is more capable than Drury to take Xero into its global future, it seems.It could leave a couple of Kiwi investors in a particularly apoplectic mood.Milford Asset Management's Brian Gaynor was tearing strips off former Commonwealth Bank boss, Ralph Norris, over his handling of the Fletcher Building fiasco.

Norris has now announced plans to stand down as chairman of Fletcher.Gaynor was also unimpressed with Xero’s plan to abandon the local bourse for foreign shores and requested "that the NZX requires Xero to receive shareholder approval before delisting from the NZX".

CBD would love to hear what he makes of a Fletcher board member taking over at the Kiwi tech darling - especially since Vamos was called in 18 months ago to develop its “management capability”.It obviously did not include developing internal capability for the top job given that it has been handed to him instead.Drury was still insisting on Monday that the company will remain based in New Zealand.Vamos, who is based in Sydney, promised he would be spending “an enormous amount of time” across the ditch and was open to moving away from Australia to where he could best serve the business.“He will consider whether he stays based in Australia or moves to New Zealand depending on the requirements of the business,” a spokesperson assured the local press.For his troubles, Vamos, who is also a Telstra board member, will have a base salary of $900,000 (Aussie) which appears to be a fair bit more than his predecessor whose total remuneration came to $NZ731,000 last year, according to Xero's annual report.Short and long term incentives could take Vamos’s total remuneration to $3.3 million.

Dead as Dodo

Speaking of hurt Kiwi pride. The country's entry into the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the year Award: CBL founder Peter Harris, has withdrawn from the grand finale in Monaco this June, according to EY.

It is understandable given liquidators and administrators have now been appointed to the CBL business which formed the basis of his nomination. And the news that is emerging from the collapse looks like dragging other big names into the mud as well.

Nabbed

Andrew Thorburn’s newish NAB recruit, Mike Baird, has handled a controversy or two in his previous life as premier of NSW.So we can’t imagine he was too flustered when it came to dealing with a senior executive who has dragged the bank into the lurid world of inappropriate behaviour.We don’t know what happened exactly, but NAB confirmed to CBD that the head of its Capital Financing division, Steve Lambert, resigned after a chat with his boss, Baird.“In speaking with NAB, Steve acknowledged he had fallen short of the standards of behaviour expected at NAB and that it would be the right thing to leave the bank,” NAB said in a prepared statement.

Cop that

It isn’t often you see the competition watchdog handing out a fine for a company making a false and misleading representations about the watchdog.The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) pinged Australian Private Networks (APN) Pty Ltd - the company behind broadband provider Activ8me - with a $12,6000 fine for claiming the ACCC endorsed its claim to offering a “superior” service to rivals.We shouldn’t be too surprised that APN is finding itself in a spot of bother with the regulators.The company is majority-owned by Sandro Di Donato, who was banned from managing a company over the collapse of electronic payments company, Bill Express.A public examination into the collapse of Bill Express heard of ''inappropriate'' transactions and inter-company loans between Bill Express, its listed parent company On Q Group (in liquidation), and APN.A few years back, Di Donato’s cousin Enzo Di Donato - the former marketing chief of Bill Express - was found guilty of one count of providing false or misleading information to ASIC. He was an APN employee at the time.He was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment, wholly suspended, upon giving security by recognisance of $5,000 to be of good behaviour for three years.